Policies and strategies implemented in Malawi to reduce the impact of HIV and AIDS on labour : the case of gender inequality

Abstract

A crisis is unfolding because of the deaths among people in the labour force. It is expected that business, government and labour address the problem of HIV and AIDS. An intervention such as, introduction of policies and strategies would help in the awareness of the epidemic to the society as a whole. This study looks at the effect of HIV on gender inequality and its implications in the labour sector. There are large social and economic gaps between women and men in Malawi, and these inequalities have played a central role in the spread of HIV; hence it is imperative to consider women when developing HIV workplace policies, because they seem to be hit harder with the epidemic than men. Empowering women to refrain from risky relationships and protecting themselves and asserting their rights would decrease the high HIV prevalence percentage for women. The study use annual Labour participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+) and annual labour participation rate, male (% of male population ages 15+) data obtained from (www.tradingeconomics.com) and annual Prevalence of HIV, total (% of population ages 15-49) obtained from World Bank over the period of 1980 to 2009. Prior to doing the regression analysis, the time series data is tested for stationarity using correlograms and the Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) test on each data set. The results suggest that there is a negative relationship between HIV/AIDS and labour on both genders for this period and that there is a gap on the effect of AIDS on women and men in the labour sector. The time series data is found to be 1(2), intergrated of order 2. The HIV data is regressed onto the labour data, using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS). Following the regression line is the Engel-Granger method which is used to test for cointegration. Other tests include diagnostic tests and stability tests